I don't think its a big part of the argument at all. It just lowers both Buena Vista and NPU's win%.

I don't believe the tournaments are comparable, but if you want to know how we did, back in March, we lost in the championship (whoever won was going to be in first) on a walk-off homerun in a game where we had a 7-run lead in.  We only lost to regionally ranked teams. Definitely not as impressive as BV and NPU finishing 4th, in May, with an automatic bid at stake, but we did the best we could. 

At the time of the rankings, these were the numbers:
Team               Win%   SOS   Regionally Ranked
Augustana       .636     .516       3-4
Chicago           .636     .530       4-1
WashU            .651     .528        5-8
North Central   .625     .522       3-7


To say North Central and Augustana are "in the same boat as" WashU and Chicago is not supported by anything. Not only do they have better winning percentages but the SOS aren't even close. If the difference between .516 and .530 is as big as the D3baseball.com numbers make them appear, Augustana would have to jump about 60 teams nationally to get to .530. How can that be close? Especially with Buena Vista and North Park falling early in their conference tournaments, they will all be very close to getting playoff bids. If they wanted to put Chicago and their 14 wins ahead of us, I would understand. They beat us pretty bad on one day. But, as of last week, NCC and Augustana didn't deserve to be in the conversation.

Oh no. I meant they will jump in SOS. I don't really know who will win the series but it will help both their SOS, which NPU needs. Both teams are very good.

Quote from: BigPoppa on May 01, 2011, 04:34:50 PM
Could be a nice chance for the Redmen to pile up some in-region wins before facing NPU in a CCIW showdown next weekend. I am expecting Cathage to move to #1 in the Central region in this week's rankings.

Doubt it. Playing Millikin really hurt their SOS. I think they might move down, temporarily. They do play NPU this week so they'll probably jump back up.

Quote from: BigPoppa on May 02, 2011, 01:17:56 PM
when looking the overall picture of the teams in this year's rankings, Carthage stands out to me as the team that no "Bad" losses on it's resume. two losses to #1 Marietta, one to #8 Heidelberg, two to IWU, Two to Augie and one to NCC (all of whom I feel are solid regional teams).

It appears that every other regional contender has at least one "bad" loss in there.

The NCAA seems to favor results against good teams a lot more than bad teams when putting together the rankings. They want teams who can seriously compete against other good teams at regionals. That's why results vs. regionally ranked teams is a primary criteria but "bad losses" isn't part of any criteria. 

St. Scholastica has scheduled 3 games with WashU the first week in March to make up for the loss of the dome games. Should be a good test for both teams.

I think we're picking nits here and missing the point. Beating a team with a .570 win% or a .600 win% is a good win. .570 or .580 is a great OWP (does any team in the central have a better one?).  Yes, the SLIAC teams hurt the OOWP but IWU, Case, and Emory help it.

Point is, there's a perception that WashU is beating on the SLIAC while other teams have played more difficult schedules and had better records. That's not true.

Come on! Knowing who the teams are takes all the fun out of it.

Since I know the most about Team D, I'll explain. Every "good" win from Team D is a team above .600, not .500. I would have also included a win against Illinois College if .500 was the criteria, but it wasn't. In fact, I was considering putting the loss to 9-5 Illinois College as a bad loss but then every team would have had a pile of bad losses. Coe is 11-7 (and looks like at least a top 2 team in the IIAC), Greenville is 13-7 (we'll see if they keep this up), Rochester is 14-4 (and nationally ranked in some poll), Platteville is 10-3 (another we'll see), and Beloit is 11-5 (and loved but most people on this board). Find me a better win than these that I missed from another team and I'll happily concede. I have Team D's OWP at .581. That is not a team that cleans up against the SLIAC.

(By the way A is Beloit, B is Coe, C is Simpson, D is WashU, and E is Greenville. Let me know games I missed if you want a better version of this list. I'd rank them B, A, C, D, E.)

This is always fun. How would rank these anonymous teams?

Team A   
In Region%   0.7
Win%   0.688
Good Wins          WashU, Aurora
Bad Losses   Wisconsin Lutheran


Team B   
In Region%   0.667
Win%   0.611
Good Wins       WashU, Simpson (x2)
Bad Losses   Benedictine


Team C   
In Region%   0.7
Win%   0.588
Good Wins        Johns Hopkins, Coe
Bad Losses   Carleton


Team D   
In Region%   0.577
Win%          0.577
Good Wins        Coe, Greenville, Rochester, Platteville (x2), Beloit
Bad Losses   Brandeis

Team E   
In Region%   0.688
Win%   0.65
Good Wins          St. Norbert
Bad Losses   Knox, Spalding (x2)

[/quote]
Then what is your ranking of the central right now?
[/quote]

I think at this point you have 4 groups of "good" teams in the central region.

1.  Teams with good records who have played good teams.
      1. Carthage
      2. Augustana
      3. Beloit
2. Teams with not good records who have played mostly very good teams and beaten some of them
      4. IWU
3. Teams with good records who have beaten mostly bad teams but some good teams.
      5. Wheaton
      6. WashU
      7. Coe
      8. Ripon
4. Teams with good records who have beaten only bad teams.
      9. Central
     10. North Park

Right. Aren't most of the teams who have decent records in the central "getting by" on bad competition? (Teams above .500 in parenthesis.)

North Park has beaten Atlanta Christian, Carroll, Dominican, Southern Vermont, and U of the South.

Coe has beaten Aurora, Fontbonne, Misericordia, WashU (9-6), and Wisconsin Lutheran

Wheaton has beaten Aurora, Colby-Sawyer, Eastern Nazarene (7-5), Mt. St. mary, Ripon (6-4), Spalding

WashU has beaten Benedictine, Coe (6-4), Dominican, Fontbonne, Greenville (7-5), Rochester (7-2), Westminster

Whose wins are better? I think it's hard to tell. I think you could find some better criteria for the rankings.

Any word on the chances of the STL situation? I haven't heard anything about that.

WashU's record vs. the SLIAC the past 4 years...

2009   8-1
2008   3-2
2007  13-1
2006  15-0
Total  39-3

Not saying this success will continue against the SLIAC (I don't really know anything about any team besides WashU), but can you really call them overrated based on their past performance? (They are scheduled to play Webster (3), Westminster (2), Fontbonne, and Greenville in 2010).

Salisbury- south (1)
st scholastica- midwest (2)
ithaca- ny (3)
washu- central (5)
chapman- west (6)
york- south (5)

SNC goes 6-0 against last week with 4 wins against a team who's 12-20 and 2 wins against a team who's 18-15 and their in-region record raises to 21-11. They jumped from unranked to #2 in the rankings.

Illinois Wesleyan is 3-8 since the first regional rankings came out. This includes 2 losses against Benedictine and Blackburn, the 5th place team in the SLIAC, and getting swept by Wheaton. Yet they moved down only 1 spot in those 3 weeks.

Coe played one game last week, against a team that was 21-15, to improve their record to 21-17. They've lost 2 of 3 to Luther, 2 of 3 to Loras, and 2 of 2 to WashU yet they are ahead of all 3 of them in the rankings. Even their 20-12 in-region record is behind all 3 of those teams.

Loras played 4 games last week against two teams that were 10-23 and 8-31 respectively, lost one of those, and jumped over Luther, who has a better overall and in-region record than them, to 5th place.

Luther went 4-0 against similarly weak teams, jumps to 25-11 in-region, and drops down a spot to #6.

Beloit also goes 3-0, jumps to 19-5 in-region, and drops out of the rankings altogether.

WashU goes 4-0 against last week with 2 wins against a team who's 21-16 and 2 wins against a team who's 27-14 (and was ranked 3rd in the region), and their in-region record raises to 24-8.  They were the only team on this list to beat a regionally ranked team in that time. They have the same exact OWP as Luther, a much better winning percentage, and they jumped from unranked to right, nowhere.

If you put these teams in any other order, it would have made more sense.